Author
Topic: [OOC] VU93 SL Project Shadowtalk (Read 16634 times)

>>>>>[Being a courier is often an entry level for the shadows, it's often a test fixers and Johnson's will send people on to see if how they work as a team, and if they can spot a tail. 'Course, that's a lot easier now with all the damned cameras everywhere, but I still prefer sending three tails after them (And told to work at varying levels of skill. So far, no one has spotted the third one.). Often the courier jobs are nothing, no crime, no big deal, not much pay. It's to see if they'll do anything, even the drek jobs, to see how they mesh. A great way to get rid of someone and get another person into the needed slot before the big score.

I also know a number of Real Shadowrunners, and don't mistake them for anything else, whose primary jobs are as couriers. They do other jobs as well, often as drivers or pilots, but their bread and butter is encoded messages and packages. It's not the best pay, but there's always someone that needs something delivered and can't trust the Federal-United Postal. Some are quite hard core and not people you mess with, either. But they're couriers, and proud of it.]<<<<< -- Money Johnson (01:49:15/01-29-74)

>>>>>[In the end, unless you're a wetwork specialist like Smiley, the vast majority of jobs will involve taking a package (whether it is paydata, physical goods, paracritters, or even metahumans) from A to B. The main difference between a courier job and an extraction is the level of violence that may be likely in picking up the package, and the fact that the package might not be entirely willing to get delivered. Swapping data in a corp's servers? Courier run, with a chance of getting brain-fried on Black IC.

I'll admit to playing courier from time to time, though the format is a bit different than the door to door kind of run. Say, for instance, a politico wishes to exchange some information with a certain businesswoman, but, for whatever reason, he can't use the usual means, and can't meet in person. Perhaps he is under surveillance. Perhaps he doesn't want to give anyone a chance to dig up dirt on him. Perhaps his wife wouldn't understand. Perhaps his wife would understand all too well. Whatever the reason, he needs someone who can discretely pass a message along, and bring a reply, without appearing out of place. That's where someone like me comes in. Because I make a big show of being seen with a lot of the movers and shakers in the area, I can meet someone for a 'friendly drink' at Dante's, where I get the package, and then later I 'just happen' to run into the businesswoman at Club Penumbra that evening, where I pass the package along, and get the reply, if there is one. In the morning, I walk into the politico's favorite restaurant to get some breakfast, and as we have a friendly chat about sports, I slip him the reply. Courier job, pure and simple, and none of those meets looks all that out of place, unless you've been tracking my movements the entire time.

Actually, courier jobs like that have gotten even more common in the past few years, after the craze with technomancers and AIs hit. According to what a 'friend' said, there are these places that everything ever on the Matrix falls into, even after its been erased and the file overwritten twenty times, and technomancers can get at it. Scary drek for people with skeletons in their closets, no? So some of these courier runs use hard copy messages (actual pen and paper kind!) or spoken codes. Real spy games kind of stuff.

And couriers are the only people who know the shortcuts for getting around the sprawl better than cabbies.]<<<<<

>>>>>[Cabbies wish they could get around Seattle as well as I can, custom bike or no.

Granted, the only reason I can keep my current lifestyle up is because a good chunk of my runs are...priority deliveries for my Triad. Means big money for me. Well, at least a couple hundred more, depending on what it is.

I'm...not surprised at the least that you were able to follow my history all the way back to the crash, but to find my real name too? I really did think that all was lost in it.]<<<<<

-- Card (12:21:31/01-29-74)

Logged

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - Tolkien

>>>>>[That actually wasn't that hard. The missing person ads your parents plastered up are still around in the Matrix. The fact that you were a SINner and a child when the Crash happened means that law enforcement gets good PR for saying they're still looking for missing persons from the Crash. Cold case, of course. A lady I 'know' searched those records for human male children with your skin, hair, and eye colors. Which still kicked out a few hundred results. So she ran an age advancement program on them, to bring them up to your approximate age. The tech isn't new, it was around before the first Crash, to ID war criminals, and for parents to see what their kids would look like, and other things like that. There were six possibles after that, and two had been found within a week of the crash, and three more turned up dead.]<<<<<

>>>>>[Almost makes me want to get lost and then found again, and paid for the PR Spin. Oh, wait, that only works for SINners and Breeders, not Ugly SINless Tuskers like me. ]<<<<< -- Murphy (16:20:44/01-29-74)

>>>>>[Not really, Card. I knew what I was looking for, and where to find it. Your parents, even if they were still actively looking for you after all this time, don't have those advantages. As I said, it is a cold case by now, buried under the drekload of other cases that have come in over the last decade. Now, if you ever got arrested, there's a chance that a moderately zealous worker at the station might run your biometrics against missing persons and cold cases and come up with a match. But then, if you get arrested, that would be the least of your worries, right?]<<<<<

>>>>>I was at one of those rallies. Even without her Talent, there's no mistaking the skill the girl has with her voice. Things may have ended up quite differently if her mother had been allowed into the country. Mercedes would have gone far at the Information Secretariat.<<<<<

--Iceblade (12:25:35/01-26-74)

>>>>>[I've thought about how life would have been different in the Tir, but I still don't think I would have been able to work at the IS. What I do remember of Aztlan instilled a great dislike of misleading the public with disinformation.]<<<<<

>>>>>[The Sixth World is not kind regarding those who cannot adapt their ideals to the realities of the world. They tend to be some of the most dangerous people around, to others as well as themselves.]<<<<<

--Iceblade (12:28:34/01-26-74)

>>>>>[Unfortunately, this is true. I learned the hard way that, just because I would like the world to solve its problems by talking, not everyone feels the same way. And they will most definitely use that against you every chance they get.]<<<<<

>>>>>[Don't forget death benefits. Working corpsec is dangerous, as anyone in the field can tell you. Most of them have benefits going to next of kin written into their contracts as a 'perk'. Deaths occurring during a gun battle as runners try to escape are one thing. That's part of the game. What is REALLY going to get a reprisal team after you is if you start doing stealth kills on every guard you come across. A slap patch of slab or laes does the same job, without costing the company extra, and does wonders for your rep. If your Face negotiates an 'expense account' for your run, grabbing some of those drugs can go a long way to getting you some repeat business.]<<<<<

--Iceblade (12:41:24/01-26-74)

>>>>>[Thankfully, I've been able to avoid working with teams like that. I have brokered a run or two for them, however, and they usually lose out on bonuses from Mr. Johnson, not too mention it's always harder to negotiate better deals for them.]<<<<<

So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Brother and sister are nicely in their happy corporate home when suddenly something happens to them that cause them to be ostracized and kicked out of their happy homes into the slums of the world.

Yeah, we’ve all heard it before, but this isn’t Japan we’re talking about here, this is a Mega in Germany, SK-P if I catch the accent on him right with the few times I’ve heard him speak German. “But hey, the Dragon don’t care what metatype you are, WTF?”

Well, in this case, they changed because of HMHVV, the Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus, each getting a different strain somehow. (Horrible name for it as well, but it was given back in the days when people thought that Metahumans weren’t human, so we’re stuck with it.).

Well, the bigots who didn’t read the “Metatype” up at the top have closed the file or moved onto the next datapage to see who else is listed here with a sputter of, “Man-eating monster” or other such thing, and frankly we’re better off without them. Now, let’s get to the nitty-gritty.

Maxy here and his sister were playing; enjoying their nice, safe corporate life when they were attacked by the monsters that their corporate lords assured them did not exist. They got infected, and kicked out into the gutters we all know and loathe. After adjusting to being a ghoul and surviving with sanity mostly intact, it appears he taught himself magic somehow, either through a master, mentor spirit, or a computer with some sorcery tutorials (And a braille system, which he also would have had to learn.).

Next I find out about him, it’s been a decade or so and he’s in Seattle, in the Redmond Barrens, working with the 162 street gang, and doing a bit of shadow work to build up his skills, contacts, and money (Not necessarily in that order.). Eventually he joined up with two other shadowrunners as a team, who accepted him for being a ghoul. I suspect that this is where he also got his street name, a bastardization of “Kurona”, as one of the members was Japanese, and it does fit him so well.

Things were happy and violent (And profitable, of course) until a ‘run went bad and they lost their Japanese member in the sewers in an improvised escape plan. Unhappy with the results, and showing an uncharacteristic (for shadowrunners) loyalty, the two ‘runners hunted for their lost friend for a year, until they were attached to a larger team, whose job it was to extract said person. Problem was, she wasn’t exactly herself any longer, and didn’t want to learn about her old self, either.

From various sources, I’ve been able to piece together that this was a major trigger to Chrona wanting to find his sister once again. Problem is, Biz happened to get in that way, Tempo was hitting the streets, and jobs were too many and profitable to just pass up. He’d need all the things those jobs gave to pay for finding his sister in cred, rep, and intel. He also picked up a bit of chemistry skills along the way, likely to help with the drug jobs. (I, personally, applaud him for this, as my chemistry home cooking lessons began, and ended, when I tried to make some homemade wine, and nearly blew up a bed.). He also got into bed with the Italian Mafia, not an easy thing to do as most families in Seattle barely like magicians (orks, they’re OK with, good kneebreakers.).

After a trip overseas, and during his downtime, he was attacked by some rather mysterious Shinto priestesses, and not in the Hentai style, either. He took them out, but they were alive enough to answer questions, like why him. Turns out they were specially trained Infected Hunters from Japan (Got to love how equal rights they are over there, neh?), and were chasing after a Wendigo that had attacked their temple, and used ritual magic to track the creature to Chrona. Ghoul, Wendigo, easy mistake to make, one is only naked and the other furry!

So, after a bit of… Negotiation, he found out that the creature (for lack of a better term yet), was in LA, and found himself in the bright lights of the reality ‘trid life that is the shadows of the city of stars. Got himself a decent P2.0 rating as “BloodClaw”! Wonder how long it took the marketing execs to think that one up. Eventually, they cornered the Windego in a scrap yard, and surprise of surprises, she up and forces out a “Max” from her now rather altered mouth. Other than that, she’s been pretty much feral (How a feral gets from Germany to Japan to LA, I’ll never know. I want to, as those airlines are either really good, or really, really bad!). Wrapping her lovingly in a few wrecked cars, Chrona (Max, BloodClaw, hard to keep up with names sometimes, isn’t it?), started work on trying to restore sanity to an Infected.

Impossible you say? Well, guess how much funding goes into that kind of research? Go on, guess. Well, unless you said “None”, you’re wrong. That’s right, hasn’t even been tried yet, so don’t be saying it’s impossible. Dragons were impossible at one time, too, remember?

A quick trip to Germany for the first time since he changed, then back to Seattle for some well-earned R&R doing shadowruns, finally Chrona and company find themselves somewhere in South America due to a Cartel who was seriously slotted off with the Italian Family he was affiliated with.

I can’t figure out exactly what happened, but if you’ll look at a satellite map just before he was kidnapped, and just a little while afterwards, yeah, that’s a really big lake there now, isn’t it? I’ll let you folks draw your own conclusions.

Well, when you blow up a country, no matter how “Small”, it’s time to let the heat die down a bit for, oh a decade, or two, or three. He got himself a nice little place he calls “Mord Haus” (“Murder House”? Really?), and mostly just chills for gigs that interest him, with the occasional helping hand to young ‘runners in need of a helping hand.

Personality wise, he’s pretty all right, unless mad, in which case things that anger him get a serious case of dead really, really fast. I will, again, point out satellite image number two. He doesn’t seem to have any kind of prejudices, except maybe bigots, but hey, who likes a bigot? He’s exceptionally intelligent, which catches a lot of people off due to his size and being a “Zombie”, and I’ve heard he’s been attending anger management courses, or at least attempting to be a lot less dangerous when angry.

Physically, he’s almost at peak performance, which isn’t bad for an ork that’s 30-years old. Perhaps it’s the HMHVV, or just a really good exercise regime. It might be his diet, but I’m not going to go there. Appearance-wise, he does look like a ghoul, but lacks the characteristic scarring from rapid growth (Possibly due to being infected so young), and he’s pretty close to troll-sized. Well, small troll-sized at least.

As for the rest, aside from keeping “Snacks” in his lined coat, eating them in public like it was just another soysloppy from Stuffer Shack, and enjoying Classical Music (That’s the stuff from the Renaissance-Era, not Classical Rock you heathens!), I’ll let the rumors of his life be his own to handle from there. Mainly as I can’t tell which ones his enemies have spread, which ones he has spread himself, which ones are true, and which ones are just pure drek. Better just to ask the man himself.

We have our fair share of rebels in our community. Some believe in causes while others just like creating chaos. Occasionally, we get that one that just seems compelled to fight the current establishment, every single one of them, no matter where or what this current establishment is. He's that kind of rebel. He hasn't been active on VU93 in a while but as a special case and one that everyone should pay close attention to, it deserved a place in the spotlight.

When not masked by any spells, our friend appears to be of African descent with a very dark ebony skin, marked in places with scars or paint. He has short and black hair, knotted up into many small dreads. His irises are amber. He has a few scars on his body, the most distinguishing of which is a thick ring of scars around his neck. Typically, he can be seen wearing cheap and simple clothes like cargo pants and sleeveless shirts (if any shirt at all,) but he does use spells to disguise his rascal looking mug when in public. No matter what the rascal looks like though, he is almost invariably never seen without an old grim looking machete sheathed on his hip. A little bird tells me the Machete is magically active, a weird one at that too. It has sharks' teeth inlaid in the grip so that the jagged saw-like edges dig into the user's hand, drawing blood and producing discomfort for anyone without thick callouses on their palms.

Finding information from his youth has proven to be basically impossible, since he seemingly came from nowhere back in the late 50s. But you all know me, that hasn't stopped me from finding some juicy rumors and far stretched stories that I'll save for later. Finding information about his old gang was a piece of cake though. They were a small but notorious bunch of cut-throats before he showed up, slaughtered their captain and took control of the few ships at his disposal. After he took over though, they became something else entirely. Back then, as Reginald Porter, he turned a small group of the most bloodthirsty and desperate pirates in the Carribean League into a bushwhack crew that targeted other pirate groups almost exclusively. They would stalk larger pirate fleets to find their safehouses and hit them unawares so as to rob them blind. It was a pretty good racket but all things comes to an end. When you throw your drek over too many people, they tend to gang up and try to bury you in a gutter. The whole thing culminated in the kind of bloodbath that makes headlines even a continent away. From the reports I have in hand, the firefight resulted in the death of 52 pirates and 34 civilians, including Shaper's entire crew. Shaper was said to have been killed at the scene with the rest, but within weeks had resurfaced. Coincidentally, the head of the crew which publicly ambushed Shaper and his crew was strangely found, chewed, torn to pieces, and half the captains which had put bounties on his head were found missing theirs. A righteous bit of retribution, but as you all know, most criminal groups have connections within authorities. Nobody was interested in joining his crew anymore, either by fear or by hatred of this arrogant captain. Shaper saw himself exiled from the islands, to be arrested on sight should he return. The official who gave the order turned up dead too, let me quote the report: in his own bed, lungs full of sea water and his own wet footprints leading from the shore to the bed.

After that, I couldn't find anything until 2068. He resurfaced in New Orleans, now using the alias Shaper, and selling his services as mojo for hire. What I could find indicates that an injured party had loosed him on a small group of twisted voodoo practitioners who had been running a kidnapping and extortion racket. After one last showdown (and another, smaller, bloodbath), he disappeared again only to reappear in 2069 smuggling guns in the CAS. Remember what I meant by "that kind of rebel". That's where the interesting part about Shaper's history starts. There he hooked up with a gun running crew ship operating in the Pacific supplying every single rebel faction along the west coast. He helped and supplied weapons to the Rinelle ke’Tesrae in Portland, the anti-Saito faction in San Francisco and I'm only mentioning these two. It was there, in San Francisco that he made connections into the Mothers of Metahumans until drek was thrown in the fan with the Policlub. After all, a non-violent resistance group can't afford to be seen ass-grabbing with a notorious gun-trafficker, right? After the MoM episode, he decided to take weird and borderline sketchy jobs down the coast with teams of runners made on the spot. Not liking running with guys he didn't really know, he moved to Portland in the Tir. There, with the help of his arms connections, he managed to secure several neighborhood and unify race-related gangs around north Portland into what would become today's biggest non-elven gang in the city.

If I have a few tips about dealing with the one known as Shaper, it's to tread carefully. From what I gathered by talking to people who have dealt with him in the past, Shaper is known for being ruthless, unforgiving and vicious. That machete of his severed quite a few heads, and if he sees you as a threat, he may try to add your name in his trophy book. All it really takes is a bad day or a small dose of Nitro for him to decide to end someone, cold and direct. I gotta say, some of these traits are what's making me like the guy, but, well... Something is off with the guy. I mean it looks like he's trying too much, so much he looks constipated all the time. Guys who are doing that are usually fighting something inside, or hiding it. And you know what they say! It's what's underneath that matters, no?

Here's what I discovered with my research on Rastafarians, I'm curious like that. Anyway, I mentioned something earlier about his small dreads... See, for a Rastafarian, the number of dreadlocks on a man's head is said to correspond to a Rasta's wisdom, while the length is said to be a sign of maturity and dedication to the holy life, or whatever the frag that his. So, wearing short locks is a purposeful sign of immaturity. He seems to be a full-grown man, but he wears his youth openly to anyone who would know how to spot it. Now, do you remember how I said bout juicy rumors and far stretched stories?

Through some contacts of mine, I managed to track down an old pirate, named Emmanuel Jean-Baptiste, who told me a story about his Captain's pet, a panther he'd bought off the ivory coast and had been told was magical. The Captain who bought him kept him in a spare quarters as his personal pet and as a convenient disciplinary aide. The big cat had been trained to savage disobedient captives or crew, and the cat seemed all too happy to oblige. He tells me the gold leash the captain kept around its neck held the creature in a constant state of pain, and it loved to share that pain with anything it could get its paws on. It went like this for about three years, until the Captain and his crew picked a wrong target at the wrong time and their flagship got literally cut in half. Few of the crew survived, but they did find among their diminished number a stranger with a scarred up neck who fit Shaper's description. One of the crew, a guy named Joseph, approached the strange young man. As he got close, the man, identified him by name and then proceeded to beat his head in with a rock. The surviving crew, near dead already from the exhaustion of swimming several miles to land fled, stealing a fisherman's boat not far from where they'd washed ashore and leaving the ink-black stranger behind. He says that, as he looked back one last time, the man was gone, and there was a panther dragging Joseph's body off into the vegetation. You guys are seeing where this is going?

This little story, his discretely advertised youth, chewed enemies, scars on the neck... It's not that far stretched if you put these things together and connect the dots from the pirate panther, to the pirate Porter and finally to the runner Shaper.

Like I said, his case is one to pay close attention to. Not because he might be not-so-human, though. Who cares really? No, with guns, mojo and good history with the resident dissidents, Shaper is a big rising star as a gang leader in Portland. He hasn't played the ambition card yet but I know for a fact that many small non-elven gangs in the surrounding area, and even some in other Tir cities, have voiced their interest in merging. Considering his aggressive nature (or demeanor), it might be just a question of time before that happens. He may well become a force to be reckoned with, sooner than later. A possible violent beastman with a taste for nitro at the head of a powerful gang... That's something everyone here should watch closely.

Chrona’s profile, paragraph seven, after “didn’t want to learn about her old self either”.

>>>>>[That’s the thing isn’t it? You never know when you’re encountering a ‘monster’ and when a ‘person’. It’s a sad fact that you can never tell unless you know the individual personally. So, when all is said and done, the infected are no worse or better when it comes to being trustworthy. At the end of the day, you still have to take your chances. Kudos to Chrona for his loyalty. There are very, very few people who still display that quality. ]<<<<< --Madrecita (03:26:30/02-03-74)

Chrona’s profile, paragraph 10, after “Dragons were impossible at one time, too, remember?”

>>>>>[While restoring sanity to the infected is a laudable goal, and one I would support under normal circumstances, as a medical practitioner, I cannot condone having the cure for one disease come at the expense of others. Chrona have publically stated that his solution would require favours without being let in on it, and that people who cannot understand that loss is the price of progress should not be in on it. Then he said something that disturbed me a bit...that he “hated blood mages...modern ones anyway.” That sent the wind up my back. You connect the dots. ]<<<<<--Madrecita (03:38:39/02-03-74)

Shaper’s profile, paragraph 6, after “Now, do you remember how I said bout juicy rumors and far stretched stories?”

>>>>>[Mmm...I’ve never heard of a Rastafarian being violent. Their philosophy seems to preclude violence. Certainly they smoke a lot of cannabis. Their way of life seems more...well, spiritual. I find this very strange, that a Rasta would saw off heads. I think I will keep a very close eye on this one. ]<<<<<--Madrecita (04:01:19/02-03-74)

Mercedes’s profile, paragraph nine, after “accompanyingthem on runs when needed”.

>>>>>[Straddling light and shadow is rarely a good idea, unless you’re prepared to be very tough indeed. Look at our dear Money Johnson. ]<<<<<--Madrecita (04:11:21/02-03-74)

Card’s profile, paragraph seven, after “and that will take precedence over anything else.”

>>>>>[Ten years inthe shadows and only twenty two? Mmm...precocious. His story is lamentably similar to many students of mine. Card honey...if you want, I can take care of the pesky problem of still resembling your former self. ]<<<<<--Madrecita (04:21:41/02-03-74)

Logged

"There are always consequences to our actions. We all must face what we have done, and submit to the justice of the pack. It may be that you will have to run alone from now on, but you cannot begin to fix what you broke without admitting that you broke it." - Madrecita's animal twin.

>>>>>[Depends on what you mean. I've had both DocWagon and my only trusted shadowdoc (Who I pay very well and tip and recommend people to, because a happy streetdoc is one who doesn't betray you) tell me to stay FAR FAR away from anything involving implants. Something about my immune system or nervous system or something being highly intolerant. It's why I carry around a comnlink, and have no chrome at all. So I'm not sure what plastic surgery would do.

And it's not like i'm on any corp lists yet. Again, I think the only people who would gun for me are the Yaks, at least, should I give them a reason to.]<<<<<

-- Card (00:15:30/02-04-74)

Logged

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - Tolkien

>>>>>[I say wan! Man paint a picture with much imaginings! Seem familiar, almost? Know why? Is here. A lie, from fiction. All parts in there. Not a first I an I hear it, most def. Am no man Porter. Rasta know not fi such ray ray come. Horizon is best guess. What say Smiley? Them play card upon you, or you make as such fi them?]<<<< --Shaper (12:45:34/02-04-74)

>>>>>[Depends on the level of work done. Minor plastic surgery and biosculpting won't even effect your aura enough to hinder your Talent. Anything more invasive, and you're sacrificing large parts of your gift. However, sometimes the little things are all it takes. Change your skin color, dye your hair, wear different clothes, and suddenly, you're a completely different person.]<<<<<